Showing posts with label Conversations on Islam [ 2 ]. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conversations on Islam [ 2 ]. Show all posts

Thursday, October 11, 2018

of apples and oranges........part 2





friends, dato and tanseri,


the more i listen to shaykh dr haitham al haddad's discourse on talaq, the more i can appreciate the degree of difficulties these boys in jakim, mais , maik etc and etc are faced with. 

they are a favourite punch bag for most ladies and even men!
talaq is a last resort, but islam ,unlike catholicism and to some extent judaism, recognizes that  marriages are not made in heaven.
some marriages are bound to fail due to mismatch ete etc  and etc....thus allah give us the privelege of talaq.

in england of ole it is not uncommon for the lords and barons to cement their wives into the walls of their castles, or arrange for them to be killed or poisoned!
such barbarism which still exist today in different forms....

listen carefully to the shaykh

dr nik howk




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From: dato paduka biji sura
Sent: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 6:20 PM
To: Nik Isahak Abdullah
Subject: Re: surah at talaq, 65............more deeper on talaq
Talak is rapidly going out of date. It was 'useful' in backward and tribal societies where women are considered second class, and men bully and ill-treat their women. Talak came from a 6th Century desert tribal society. 

But today , with science and technology changing society and economic arrangements within it, talak surely faces an inevitable and well-deserved challenge from thinking minds.  With women well educated and able to work (many are accomplished professionals and earn high income (and pay tax) would talak not be exposed for its imbalance, unfairness to women, and its blatant misogyny? 

Surely it has no place in a 21st Century society - where  women are equal before the law, are well educated, and are respected by men.


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On Tue, 9 Oct 2018, 18:24 Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah, <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

so what system do you suggest we use , dato paduka?
have you given time to listen to the good shaykh anyway ? 
that talaq is given to man only for a reason allah knows best.
otherwise all of us will be divorced many times over!



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From: dato paduka biji sura
Sent: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 6:33 PM
To: Nik Isahak Abdullah
Subject: Re: surah at talaq, 65............more deeper on talaq

dr nik , i don't waste my precious time listening to  him or people like him......
It is up to us in each society to think of the most fair and human solution for ourselves, right?  Why should we allow ourselves to be dictated today by people who lived in the past, and under different circumstances and level of enlightenment? Should we not bear the responsibility ourselves for our own lives?

Surely this is so obvious! 


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On Tue, 9 Oct 2018, 19:18 Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah, <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

you are suggesting secular humanism to replace islam.......

marriage as a civil activity, and divorce at the civil court , or forget about marriage altogether....technically we 'live in sin' , better.
anyway 'sin'  is a just a definition of the 'insane'.
or am i putting words in your mouth

 you have a better system sans islam........civil society, religion is just an opium for the lowly masses.
where  and when do you get this 'germ' germinated in your mind, dato paduka?

 was it too much schopenhaur, immanuele kant, george bernard shaw , betrand russel or your favourite john stuart mill during your cambridge days??

cannot be karl  marx...



From: dato paduka biji sura
Sent: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 7:25 PM
To: Nik Isahak Abdullah
Subject: Re: surah at talaq, 65............more deeper on talaq
So, you are for chopping off limbs?  That makes for a better society? 


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On Tue, 9 Oct 2018, 19:38 Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah, <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

yes, yes.....if we are 100 % muslims  or majority  of  country agree to shariah....... yes, yes.
    and why not? our prison system is not working. i was talking to an ex prisoner the other day. 

     5 to  6 to a room with hardly elbow room to move is the norm. 
    dsai , when he was in sungai
    buluh had the pleasure of staying in the sick bay all the time. now that he is out , he is really up
    and about.
    unfortunately or fortunately for us , he is destined to be our next pm , but that is another story
    worth another blog issue for me to ponder on.

     but back to the syariah dato paduka, if it cures human ills , why not?
but that is an utopian dream.... because we will never be 100 %, not even 40 %..... because we have so called 'muslims' like you who would not agree.....and you guys are sizeable, i suspect.

 and 100 % or 70 % or whatever is not just the criteria.....there must be 1st justice and welfare...... a thief who is poor  and hungry will not be qualified to have his hands chopped......

 back to my question dato.........when and where do you get this germ of secular humanism?
oxford, cambridge or penang free school or was it rmc ?
just my curiosity




From: dato paduka biji sura
Sent: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 8:46 PM
To: Nik Isahak Abdullah
Subject: Re: surah at talaq, 65............more deeper on talaq
Yes, yes???!!!!!  omg dr nik.


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On Wed, 10 Oct 2018, 08:23 Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah, <drnikisahak@hotmail.com> wrote:

and this is something you can never comprehend dato paduka
but you will subsequently
when you are in that 6' by 2' hole in the ground, insyaallah
but then it would be too late my dear dato paduka

😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃



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We all will die.

My end will come soon. Very soon. I am not perfect, but l think l have tried to live a decent life, doing some good, and doing no harm to others. 

So l am not afraid of the end of my life.
............................................................................................................................
from puan khatijah hanson of milton keyne, Uk


Today, 12:21 AM
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Thursday, October 13, 2016

Shaykh Ninowy......an interview






friends, dato and tansri,

for muslims around the globe now, especially in muslim minority countries, holding on to their 'ugama' is like  clenching  'a burning coal ' in the palm of a believer.

muslims are despised everywhere they go.
minimum, we are looked with suspicion and in some place with derision.
masjid and surau got burned; having a qur'an in some airport may end up with you missing or being ejected from a flight etc an etc.

yet, there was a time less than a century ago when even the news of a muslim woman getting raped in belgrade would have launched massive troops movement at the austrian-bosnian border.

now we are 1.6 billions and growing.
but we are like 'foams being pushed around by the ocean'.

what ails us? 

listen to one of my  current tok gurus and shaykh , shyakh ninowy, for a possible answer and solution to this current ennuie and malaise affecting the ummah

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Saturday, August 6, 2016

Let Us Get Get Back To Basic.....Surah Luqman; Epilogue






friends, dato, and tansri,

 we reach the end of surah luqman.
we have a choice of listening to shaykh tawfique chowdhury or ustaz asim khan.
i listen to both.

 chowdhury at [ 41.00 ] mentioned that about 1/3 of world population are christians, 1 in 5  of people walking this earth are muslims in various forms and shapes, varying levels and levels, sufi, salafi, wahabi, traditionists, etc etc and etc,shiae, sunni....

and omg! 1 in 4 are atheists...if he include the secularists i think the figure is bigger!


 a believer rides on two 'wings', the 'wing' of fear and the 'wing' of hope.
ya rahman, ya rahim, ya latiff and ya wadud are the wing of hope...ya mutakabbir, ya zaljalaliwalikram , ya malik, kahhar, ya jabbar!, the 'wing' of fear.

 dr nik howk
ps: i dreamed meeting my long dead tok guru  and i asked him about the present muddle and puddle,
....'demo ning baso jenih menatae tak rg'eti ugamo! ...semua,hok ngaji denga hok tok ngaji, propesar,  DO, ADO, tok haking, pok mat nyadap
dok ikut machae hidung demo doh keno cucok machae lembu..'


From: Azmi Wan Hamzah Sent: Friday, August 5, 2016 5:33 PM
To: Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah; nadzru.azhari@gun; Wan Ariff Wan Hamzah
Subject: Re: Fw: let us get back to basic......surah luqman ; epilogue

nikhowk,  

chowdhury is wrong to say 1/3 of the world's population is christian. 

many people of christian heritage in europe openly declare themselves to be atheists and agnostics. if you were to judge the numbers on the basis of weekly church attendance, i would seriously doubt that 50% of the native population of any of the western european nations are christians. which explains why you frequently find old churches been converted to mosques after expanding muslim populations buy them over. 

i believe there is something of a revival of christian worship in eastern europe, parallel to the revival of islam in former territories of old russia, after years of communism where the state religion is atheism. any revival, however, will be coming from a very low base. i doubt if you can assume that 50% of the native populations consider themselves good christians; the same i suspect of the islamic revival in the stans. 

if indeed his estimate of the muslim population is reliable at 20% or 1.5 -1.6 billion people, i dare say the christian numbers do not exceed that. but the christians, by and large, are not inclined to view another christian of a different denomination as non-christian, thanks to a process of neutralisation of aggressive sectarian differentiation through the process of secularism. if you go by the trigger-happy way our lebais and mullahs of the muslim faith are prone to declare an individual, group or sect as beyond the pale, then the muslim population could be very small indeed!

salam, azmi.

________________________________ peace!


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ts,

i cannot agree more with you
nobody can read people's heart even when they say they are muslim.

only allah knows the exact degree of our kufrness and  'almunafikunnness', for want of better definition.
and mind you ts, munafiks are placed at the bottom of the burning cauldron, lower than the atheists...along with false scholars, scholars who sell their ugama for a few ringgit, and kings, pm and dictators and sultans who are not 'adil'  and 'beradab' to their raayats and themselves!


i suspect chowderhury is  being quite polite and generous here.
he quotes the 'official' vatican' church figures , a combined population of both catholic and protestant.....
and yes i do agree with you ts, most christians now are non practicing...they are secular ie  meaning varying degrees of 'unbelielief'ie atheistic.

i choose to agree with the lebais though regarding muslims, and i and you know this is debatable, but i will tell you why my figures are much lower than the lebais even!
 


my figures and estimate is probably be much lower  than the lebais that most seem to look down at,.... but to be generous and politically correct,that is why i 'include, ' levels and levels' , to denote inclusiveness....  shiae and sunnis.


only god knows!

but numbers are academic ts.
in my life experience  and statistics, only  less than 0.1 % of muslims can  do the 'menguchap'  [shahadah ]at the point of their death .
   [   http://drnikisahak.blogspot.my/2008/05/some-more-random-thots-on-death.html   ]
  from here even if one is generous one can extrapolate how many billions of us are actually muslims.

.....and that is frighteningly low.
and why not?

most of us do not want hudud, or view hudud as being promitive......we are not going to debate on this, but this is already a basis for differentiaiton.
etc etc and etc.

    allah is a god of 'big pictures'! ....HE is not petty. HE only asks big questions...
"WHY, and WHY NIK HOWK you choose lord Reid over ME", HE would ask for instance,
 and that would be difficult for us all to answer, coming to almost 60 years of post independence  and currently standing at over 65 % malay-muslim dominance over politics in malaysia.

back to numbers ts, real muslims most probably will be much much less than the stated 1.6 billions....but 1.6 billion and growing is a nice figure to toast around in this age of muslim bashing.

dr nik howk

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 Nikhowk, 

These numbers are not important to me either, but some of your readers may consider them important and deserve to have a better perspective of the reliability of chowdhury"s estimate. Mine are purely conjecture, based on random observation and experience - hardly a basis for scientific statistical estimation!

thanks for your honesty in declaring you leaned to the side of the lebais and mullahs whom I described as trigger-happy in their denouncement or exclusion of fellow Muslims. But I am disappointed all the same, that someone as bright, educated and with your exposure would not step back a little from the temptation of being judgmental over your fellow Muslims and not leave it to Allah the All Knowing. Personally, I live my life as well as I could for Allah, my fellow humans and for myself. But as my Ustaz in school reminded me years ago : masing2 jaga kubur sdiri, tak soh sibuk kubur orae!"

Back to the unimportant figures. You now clarified that Chowdhury may have rather generously combined Catholics and Protestants in his numbers. Well, that may not now be all that generous. Most Protestants and Catholics have assumed a live and let live coexistence, refraining from the exclusion rhetoric that typified historical discourse between them. It allowed for a lowering of inter-Christian tension and settlement of the Irish sectarian bloodshed. Only the more virulent form of Anerican evangelical Christianity would insist on differentiation, exclusion and condemnation.

Iraqi and Syrian societies, under the secular, authoritarian Baathist ideology, have kept Sunni and Shiah communities away from each other's throats for decades, though not necessarily freed from regime violence. To be fair, most Muslim societies have kept to tolerance and neighborliness  for centuries, by and large. But the late 20th and early 21st century is typified by savagery and bloodlust between Muslim sects that threatens to outdo the excesses of Christian internal conflicts of 500 years ago. What caused the sudden exuberance of violent tendencies amongst the Muslims? American design and/or Zionist conspiracy? Or Saudi petro-dollars? 

When you and I were growing up, did we ever hear from the mimbar the weekly exhortation  to guard against "ajaran2 sesat saperti qadiani, shiah, etc (the etc yesterday included 'sekularisma, pluralisma dan elbigitee" and may include next week "malaysiakini, YouTube and bonsai"). Unless that apostate Obama has succeeded to swap the Malaysian religious schools syllabus or Mossad agents have penetrated Malaysian madrasahs and pondok schools, you'll have to start worrying about the third alternative as being the source of divisions within Muslim society.

Nikhowk, we have had very lively and open discussion about the introduction of hudud and where we differ on the details of readiness of infrastructure for its introduction. You dismissed my concerns as excuses; I viewed your rush as recklessness that could hurt the Islamic brand. As both of us were honest, sincere and truthful in our positions, I believe Allah will judge both of us kindly. And if we as the Ummah leave the  matter of what is beyond the pale amongst fellow Muslims to the All-Knowing, Compassionate and Merciful, you can tout the 1.6 billion with less anxiety!

My prayer for your dear wife, Salam and warm regards, Azmi.

Ps.
This my long explanation of how you help or hurt a brand;

There was a news item out today about Singaporean PM's visit to Washington.  The Singapore PM's wife came for a bit of rough criticism for presenting not the best example of Singaporean elegance and affluence - well, she did not quite compare with Michelle Obama in terms of poise, dress sense and presence. It later transpired that she carried a clutch-bag bought from some handicap school shop, designed and made at the Spore school. The mood of biting criticism reversed into an outpouring of Singaporean pride and support for Madame HoChing. I cannot rule out that it was not planned and contrived - you know she's a very smart woman.

Her Malaysian counterpart has been reported to buy loads of Birkin handbags from the Parisian Hermes boutique, each costing tens of thousands of dollars. Ho Ching paid sin$15 for her clutch bag that she took to meet The Obamas. 

What was reported of HoChing has served the Singapore brand very, very well.


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From: Nik Isahak Wan Abdullah
Sent: Saturday, August 6, 2016 1:13 PM
To: Azmi Wan Hamzah
Cc: Wan Ariff 2; nadzru.azhari@gunanusa.co.id
Subject: Re: let us get back to basic......surah luqman ; epilogue
ts,

 i dont think i am being judgemental at all ts,
when, in my frequent nightmare scenario, i often wake up with cold sweat as i dream  myself as being an al munafikun. i cannot be judgmental.

 let us get beyond rhetorics and not allow ourselves to be fasinated by 'small frames' and small ideas. 
let us get beyond apoligising our  apparent disunity and broad spectrum of belief and postures.
let us look at the big picture.
the battle in this 21st century is the battle of ideas.

 we muslims have  not by any means raised the bar.
our bar, ts, compared to muslims of old, has been getting lower and lower.

 just look at our scholars now: before they would just be the guys who would just be fit to carry the tok guru's slippers around! now they are big time. travel business class across continents giving lectures everywhere apologising to the west!

 for example, tariq ramadan was banned from entering the usa because years back he was 'slightly' independent. he has to tow the line in his thinking. now he is 'sanitised' and ok to the west.
at what price ts, you might ask?

 very high one i would add.
he and his friends are going to relook and reinterpret the qur'an to bring its ' incongruence with present  secular  views' to some degree of 'congruency'. omg!

 there is a select group of them singing this swan-song.

 rather, the secularists have widened their net  tending to marginalise us..
just think:
if you are a cambridge prof like tj winter and hold to the sacrosanct muslim view that lgbt is not right , you stand to lose your next tenureship in the u.

 if you as a majority, in afghanistan  or somalia or elsewhere, want sharia as your constitution, you get yourself talibanized and un will declare you persona non grata to the world at large.
un and usa will get a corrupted clown like hamid karzai to lord over you within a portion of the militarized enclave called kabul. elsewhere in afghanistan is talibanistan.
in the name of sanity they will bomb your homes, brand you with names and drone you to death .
fellow muslims elsewhere will be so 'dumb and stupid'  by daily drummimg by cnn, bbc and aljazira,that even they would think you are 'crazy' nuts.

 if you go on the pulpit and talk about the revival of the caliphate, you will  be droned.
etc etc etc.

 the space for good old islam is getting narrower and narrower.
but what the bloody heck!

 at the end of time, this is what we should expect.

 if we,  present day muslims bother to take more time to know our qur'an better, and in the process leave behind our secular world viewpoint at the doorstep before the qur'an , and not laced god's divine message with our  very own polluted  and adulterated understanding,
.....we will come to know our din better, insyaallah..

 for some it will already be too little, too late!

dr nik howk

 ps: may i suggest for our next dinner meeting we meet at me'nate, just a few metres away from wardieburn camp. they serve good steak here. we can collectively drown our sorrow and anger over their wagyu beef.


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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Levels and Levels......







Friends, Dato and Tansri,

One Abubakar al Khattani and Abu Hasan ar-Ramli asked a tok guru and Shaykh, Abu Said al-Kharraz:
"Please tell us the stations in our journey to Allah? ".

al-Kharraz answered, " It has to start with repentance, repentance and repentance.....", and he went on,
" after this station, one moves on to khauf [ fear ]. From the station of khauf one move on to raja' [ hope ].
From the station of raja' , one move on to be a 'solihin' and 'solihah'.
Then, one gets elevated to being a mureed.
From being a mureed , one moves on to the next station, a state of  
ta'at, [ in complete obeyance ].
From complete obeyance one moves on to the station of mahabbah [ a state of unqualified love ]. 
From this station the next station is rindu [ 'lovesick' ].
The penultimate station on schedule is a steep hill to climb, leading to walliallah [ allah's friend ]
The last and final stop for the mere mortals is the station of the 
al-muqarrabin [ the one near to HIM ]

[ excerpt from haqq' iq at-tashawwuf, shaykh abdal qadir isa, [ circa 1920 - 1991 ]



Another sufi shaykh, al-Junaid al Bagdhdi, sultan al awliya of all shaykhs of his time, ten centuries earlier,  was asked a more direct and personal question by his fans:
" Shaykh, how do you achieve your current stature and state? "
" By staying under that staircase for over thirty years!..." , alluding to 'istiqamah ' and 'sabr' in doing the necessary 'legwork' a traveler had to undergo before they reach their status of a sufi saint. The 'legwork' is zikrullah, zikrullah and zikrullah and zikrullah, and good behaviour manners and adab...years and years of remembrance, total dedication  to the hala and the haram,and 'hablu minal llah' and 'hablu minan nas'.



At my personal level, being without a tok guru for decades, I have been oscillating, back and forth, back and forth, like a yo-yo, between the 3rd station, khauf, and the 4th station, raja' .
I get my occasionally 'endorhin high'  when on the rare occasion, when allowed to leapfrog to  a state of mahabbah, not stopping at the station of mureed and ta'at! 
This transient abberation in the order of things and adab is not long though. 
As fast as I get to that stage, I percolate down back to the station of  khauf [ fear ] and raja' [ hope ].
When you have been in this 'business' for some years now like i do,  the spirit is ever willing, but the flesh occasionally rebel! Waking up at 4 am in the wee hours of the morning  can be done for a period of two weeks, at the most three, but is a difficult proposition if it is to be done daily , seven days a week, 54 weeks in a year, come vacation  or working. 
This is in the realm of 'hubluminallah'. Beyond this come 'RINDU'. 
One cannot fake it.
Mere mortals like you and me, we fall back to where we are.

At my age now, I wish I can turn back the clock by 20 years. Then a decent Tok Guru would have entertained me and lead me by the hand over those slippery 'slope'.
Now, at 64, I am already afflicted by phd  [ 'permanent head damage' ], and no tok guru or shaykh, in their right mind, would want to waste his precious time and emotion  to 'teach an old monkey like me  new tricks'. So here I am permanently bivouked at station, hope.

 ...and to make things straight for the record, it is not just the lack of a 'mursyid tok guru'.
the potential student is also mainly at fault, not wanting to remove his cloth of egoism!
it is much a problematic student than the lack of tok guru.
i am to be blamed!

I guess there are many many millions like me.
In our thirties we have more than a passing interest in things 'tassawuf' but over the years we are too choosy about which  tok guru we go to. 

 Central , from our perspective, rightly or wrongly, I think is , our reluctance to 'lose' our personal 'soveriengty'' to just any charlatan tok guru.
And currently there are just quite a number in the 'business'.
Bad and wrong 'tok gurus' can oftentimes be worse than no 'tok gurus' at all!
At the end, while waiting for the 'murshid' tok guru, we 'missed' the boat........
A problem of being too careful.

But insyaallah , even the station of hope is good enough.

 Allah hummakh tim lana bi husnil khatimah , wa la takh tim alaina bi suul khatimah!
[ oh allah, grant a good ending to our lives and don't let end our lives with bad ending....]


Dr Nik


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